So following a lot of positive feedback I got in my post for organizing photo files (check it out here), I decided to expand my OCD related 15 minutes of appreciation to detail out my MP3 organization method. Personally, I think it’s less necessary to save all your MP3’s because they can be easily accessible and downloadable online (unlike your own personal pictures, that once lost – are lost). More importantly if you have play lists or CDs to document those in word or excel files so that if a CD is damaged later or a playlist is erased, you will know what songs you need to get to recreate those CDs/playlists. Regardless here is my current MP3 downloading hierarchy, love to hear from fellow OCD/control freaks if you have other thoughts on this or methods of organisation.

1. Create an overall “MP3” folder; other high-level folders you can create are “Playlists” or “Albums”. You can also have a “Genre” folder with different musical style subfolders and in that just list the artists or songs to make it easier for you to search them in the MP3 folder.

1.1 Then year folders (i.e. 2016, 2017, 2018, etc.)

1.1.1 For those MP3s that are part of full album you can create Album subfolders for each album or save the individual MP3s and include the album list in your Album folder in “1” above. But that would get a bit tedious. I would just create under MP3’s folders for each Album, makes it easier to sort, and search.

For each song it is best to name each file with the Artist name, then featuring who, a dash, space, and then the song name followed b in brackets the remix or version name if any, i.e.

David Guetta ft. Rihanna- Who’s that Chick (Dj X Remix)

This is a simple hierarchy but it has worked for me for all my MP3 files since the 90’s.  It makes it so easy to search MP3 files and find what you are looking for when you need to.  Really makes it easy to go through them as you create your own playlists.